Somewhere In Between

To the one in the middle,

“Where are my retainers?” I hear Josh groaning as he digs through his backpack. “Esther, do you know if I packed my retainers—the ones in the green case? Did you see it?”
“Look in the tote bag,” I tell him.
“Ugh, it’s not there. I can’t find it.”
“Do you want me to call Dad?” Jeff asks. “Have him bring it over?”
“Yea, you probably forgot other stuff too,” I add. “Check. Now.”
“Never mind.” My younger brother stops digging. “I don’t wanna bother him. He’s probably sleeping by now.”
“Damn I forgot my Math folder,” I realize after unpacking my stuff. “This sucks.”

I grew up thinking these kinds of conversations with my brothers were normal. That every other kid at school had to deal with missing retainers or forgotten underwear on weekends. It wasn’t until 2nd grade when I started realizing that I didn’t have one house like everyone else. I had two parts of a whole—one here and one there. Weekdays for Dad. Weekends for Mom.

Dr. Atlas, our school guidance counselor, was teaching the 2nd and 3rd graders about domestic abuse and child neglect that morning. There was a show with puppets and dolls that lasted about 10 minutes. I wasn’t sure what was going on and I tried to guess what reaction I was supposed to have by peeking at the faces of the students to my right and left. Their expressions looked just as blank as mine.

But at the end, when Dr. Atlas and another female, welcomed us to come up and ask any questions we had, I jumped out of my seat, leaving my overstuffed red Jansport behind, and darted to the front of the stage. I wanted to be first in line to talk to the doctor. Not the female; she didn’t have the letters D and R in front of her name so I wasn’t sure if I could trust her. I didn’t find out Dr. Atlas was a guidance counselor until much later; that day, I just thought he was the doctor.

When it was finally my turn, I took a deep breath and looked up. The doctor was much taller up close, so I needed to tilt my head back a little more.

“Hi,” he asks, “what can I do for you?”
“Um so I have a mom. And I have a dad. But they don’t live together.”
“Mhm”
“And I go to my Mom’s on the weekends, but I stay at Dad’s on the weekdays.”
“Oh, okay.”
“So can you um tell me what to do. To you know, fix things up between them.”
“Oh um… well first let me ask, is there anything else going on at home? Is anyone doing anything that would hurt you?
“I don’t like going to so many houses all the time. I want to stay in one house and I want one family with mom and dad.”

The doctor stoops down. Now, he’s looking straight at me. I can see his mustache up close. I really wanted to graze my fingers against that fuzzy thing. And his wispy white hair looked a lot like cotton candy.

“What’s your name, dear?”
“Esther. I’m in the 2nd grade.”
“Ok, Esther, and uh are your parents divorced?”
I’d heard of that word before but never in my house.
“They’re separated,” I tell him.
I walked away that morning asking myself, “What’s the difference?”

The school called my mom and my dad that weekend. Mom walked over to me on Saturday and asked, “Did you tell your guidance counselor something, Esther?”
“What?”
“Your school called and said you talked about me and Dad. Why did you bring that up?”
“They said we could talk to them about anything.”
“They meant anything related to abuse. What happened between me and Dad…It isn’t the same thing. At all. Stop talking to people about this. It’s not their business. They don’t need to know.” 

Mom wanted me to keep my lips sealed. Dad also thought it was best. So I stopped telling people things. I didn’t feel like I could. And it wasn’t abuse, which means it probably wasn’t as important as I thought. There wasn’t a puppet show for my problems. So I just kept lacing up my shoes, packing up the tote bag, getting in the car, getting out of the car, unpacking my things, and ringing the doorbell on whoever’s house I was supposed to be at that day. Hopefully I didn’t forget my retainers.

I didn’t like it—going from here to there and back again—because here and there were two completely different homes. And each master of the house had his and her set of rules. The minute I stepped foot on Mom’s property, the letters D-A-D were forbidden. And if I were at Dad’s, the letters G-O-D were the only ones ever worth talking about.

But I liked the in-between. I grew up waiting for the in-betweens. I liked being known as the girl in transit. I didn’t like getting there. The destination. Home. If that’s what I’m supposed to call it. I hated arriving. At mom’s or dad’s. Because I never knew what to do with myself when I got there. Was I Mom’s kid? Was I Dad’s kid? Could those two be the same?

So I looked forward to the 10 minute car ride. Or the 35 minute bus ride. And even the 3 minute walk from the bus stop to home. Because during those sacred minutes, I could close my eyes and let my mind drift to a place where Mom and Dad lived together; my brothers and I stayed put on weekends; and the canvas tote bag that we used to pack our belongings was forgotten. I could twirl amidst all the possibilities that the world refused to let me entertain.

When I was in my 20s, people started telling me to figure things out and being the girl in transit wasn’t a good enough answer anymore. But I didn’t have another answer because all those years of floating in transition kept me from grounding myself on any other identity. I thought there wasn’t anything else to my life besides a separation and two houses. And that wasn’t exactly the kind of story I wanted to have for myself so I waited for those moments when my mind could slip away.

Except all that really did was delay me from seeing that the destination wasn’t this house or that house. Mom’s life or Dad’s life. It’s wherever I decide to end up. And these days, I’m still very much a girl in transit, but I’m also a girl who can see the destination for her life getting clearer and clearer. I haven’t arrived yet, but when I do, I don’t wanna be afraid of getting out and planting my feet on the concrete wherever that is. Because wherever that is, I know it’ll be my home, whether it’s here or there, and at home, I know I can unpack my things, stay a while, and spend some time figuring out all those other parts of me that were lost in transition.

Sincerely, Esther